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Research starter

This list includes databases in which you can begin many research topics. It includes databases catering to all levels of user, not just undergraduates. Content of these databases can include reference sources like encyclopedias or dictionaries; articles that give an overview of a topic, issue, controversy, or recent event; or that provide broad coverage to assist in narrowing or refining a research topic. After you have used these databases for background research on your topic, you can move on to more subject-specific databases.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is an illustrated collection of more than 57,000 specially written biographies of the men and women from around the world who shaped all aspects of Britain's past. Limited to simultaneous user.

Search or browse over 2500 entries on almost one thousand years, from the first Olympic Games in 776 BC to the death of Marcus Aurelius in AD 180, this accessible and wide-ranging reference work draws on the groundbreaking Oxford Classical Dictionary to present more than 2,500 entries on the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome. The dictionary covers key aspects of ancient Greek and Roman life and literature, such as science, social structure, philosophy, and religion, and contains comprehensive articles on central figures, both real and mythological, from Achilles to Zeno. References are linked via Get VText.

Browse or search over 600,000 words showing meanings, history, and pronunciations from across the English-speaking world. As a historical dictionary, the OED is very different from those of current English, in which the focus is on present-day meanings. You'll still find these in the OED, but you'll also find the history of individual words, and of the language—traced through 3 million quotations, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to films scripts and cookery books. You can also explore a timeline of when words entered the English language and the many works that have act as sources for the OED.

Organized alphabetically, each entry offers a brief history and outlines contemporary social, economic, political and religious issues. For each country there is a map and a quick-reference fact box containing data and statistics including languages, population, GDP, capital city, life expectancy, and more. References are linked via Get VText.

The Oxford Index includes content from numerous Oxford databases and publications and presents abstracts and overviews of that content. Links to full-text may be restricted by subscriptions; we do not have access to everything indexed in this database.